A doubter’s approach to the bagging dilemmahttp://www.hcn.org/articles/a-doubters-approach-to-the-bagging-dilemma
The brown paper bag I carried out of the bookstore wasn’t there for the sake of discretion. Truth be told, the bookstore refuses to handle plastic anymore. Ideally, the clerk told me, it was on the verge of going entirely bagless, so I was lucky to be handed a brown paper sack. But it was raining, fortunately raining, and as I walked down the sidewalk trying to shield my new purchase, I secretly imagined a few genuine watermarks marring the surface of a page or two, indelible reminders that the spine of the West’s summer drought had finally been broken.

When (and if) the electronic book revolution gets more flexible and affordable, this bookstore might also be going bookless. Despite our latest national fixation with banning disposable plastic bags, nobody knows exactly how the future will be packaged. From an eBook merchandiser’s point of view, the traditional book is the archetype of excess packaging, the ideas on the page the only product an ecologically minded consumer should have to purchase. As a wordmonger, I tend to agree, but not entirely.

Like a lot of people, I’ve been thinking that the earth would be a lot better off without plastic bags. At the time of their appearance in the consumer world, they were touted as cheaper, lighter, more durable and a blessing when it came to saving trees. Now, as is the case with many innovations, the blessing has been transformed into a curse. No matter where you live, plastic bags billow and blow like dried leaves across the landscape or clog up the rivers. Allegedly, 100 billion of them get tossed out annually, a one-use trip from the checkout line to the landfill.

Major cities in the West, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, to name just a few, have taken action to ban the plastic bag, some going so far as to charge shoppers 10 cents and a nasty look if they must beg for paper. Little Colorado tourist towns like Telluride and Durango have been waging letter-to-the-editor wars over local ordinances that would stifle a shopper’s ability to get his or her hands on all but the credit card kind of plastic.

During these disposable bag debates, I wonder if anyone is talking about the sheer volume of packaging being hauled away inside those plastic and paper hammocks that cradle the products we buy, not to mention the shipping cartons and reams of plastic wrap that arrive by the semi-load at every shopping outlet before the merchandise gets arranged as stock on every American retail shelf.

Yes, there’s plenty of waste to go around, but the burden of it manages to fall, once again, squarely in the shopper's cart.

I try to remember my reusable bags when I go out. Just like the 15 pairs of reading glasses I tuck into every corner of my house, bags are stuffed all over my vehicle, into the trunk, under the seats, in the glove compartment and I compress them into the tiny pockets of my backpack, bicycle and scooter saddlebags. Yet somehow, inevitably, I sometimes end up standing bagless in the checkout line, forced to accept plastic bags or if I’m really lucky, increasingly rare paper bags, which come in handy as garbage-can liners.

If plastic bag bans become the norm in the West, I’m guessing that this new set of regulations will only prompt human beings to find sneakier ways around them. Some cities that have banned the bag have already reported increases in shoplifting, thanks to the influx of personal reusable sacks in their stores. Sadly, as long as saving money is the bottom line, the planet will never be our number-one concern.

As a community, I know we should be more than semi-conscious about the problem, but then again, is anyone keeping track of how many customers reuse or recycle the plastic bags they collect in some form or another? I know we’re offered secondhand bags with every secondhand purchase we make at garage sales and thrift stores. Surely, education and not just banning plastic bags, is key to solving the problem. Or am I a Pollyanna?

Though I may be compost before the average plastic bag breaks down, I can’t help foreseeing a future city or coastline where mounds of tote bags -- all discarded -- have come to rest. Ah, someone tells me, this is our newest unnatural wonder, the great dunes of our good intentions.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. He writes in Dolores, Colorado.

]]>No publisherWriters on the Range2014/09/25 04:05:00 GMT-6ArticleNeighbors who visit my backyard in the dead of nighthttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/neighbors-who-visit-my-backyard-in-the-dead-of-night
Not long ago, in the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of snickering outside my bedroom window. I lay still, ransacking my brain for ideas on who might be out there, playing a trick on me, though by this point I had a fairly good idea of the culprits.

I reached for my flashlight and slipped out of bed. With one hand, I yanked the curtain aside, and with the other I flipped on the switch. The beam caught the glittering eyes of two intruders staring back at me. Raccoons in my Russian olive tree. In that sweet spot where the greatest limbs converged about five feet off the ground, I habitually find a mound of the species’ feces. It accumulates until I decide to blast it loose with the garden hose, always careful to stand clear of the splatter. This has been going on for quite some time, though this was the first night I’d ever caught the raccoons in the act.

It’s a giant tree, maybe 50 years old, spreading a canopy of branches over my front yard. Don’t blame me for planting it; I inherited it. When I stand back to look at it, I sigh, because the Russian olive is considered a “trash tree” in the West, an invasive species that, along with the tamarisk, thrives beside riparian corridors and is slated for extermination in many counties.

This particular tree, however, is a stunning example of deciduous good looks. How it survived for half a century in what is currently my front yard is beyond me. Its roots must be stealing water from my neighbor’s cow pond.

In late summer when the tree is laden with olives, its limbs come alive, bouncing to a bird rhythm as squadrons land in the branches in order to rip the ripe fruit loose. The lawn suffers in the process, littered with the residue of the seasonal enthusiasm, from the olives that fall to the ground to the bird poop that whitewashes the nearby fence posts and spatters the lilac leaves.

The olives themselves are pitiful specimens, a misnomer for what we normally think of as companions for a dry martini. Mine are about the size of lima beans and bitter as turpentine, with hard seed casings, but despite everything, the tree has found its niche. Once established, Russian olives can eke out a living nearly anywhere in the arid West.

Squirrels gather and store their seeds. Birds, especially blackbirds, devour them, although the experts claim there is no proof that multiple bird species depend on the fruit. Some animals clearly make use of the trees – including, particularly, raccoons, which eat the olives. This is a wildlife fact I can add to the scientific record. In fact, I can say I have irrefutable poop.

If Russian olives weren’t so aggressive -- crowding out the cottonwoods, willows and other so-called native vegetation and sometimes even obstructing our irrigation ditches -- the trees might be cultivated for their own benefits. In fact, when Russian olives were imported to this country in the early 1900s, ranchers used them to curb erosion, deploying the trees as a windbreak in every wide-open space that needed protection.

Still, I don’t want to worry about the wrongheaded notions of the past. Even though many purists would say the species has no right to continued existence, I keep my one tree standing as a year-round habitat toilet.

Of course, it’s hard for a lot of us living in the West to justify our own existence here. I can’t think of any reason for most of the improbable metropolitan drainages like Los Angeles, Phoenix, or Las Vegas to endure in such a barren and inhospitable climate, but sure enough, they do. And they thrive, just like the Russian olive. Roads, like tree roots, supply the core with nutrients; the municipalities with their utilities grow thicker every year and tap deeper into the water supplies, damming and diverting that precious liquid we require for everything from hay to grapes.

The process repeats itself as our edifices choke out much of the natural vegetation. I don’t want to gloss over the obvious, but let me say this: Not everything that comes out of us is a marvel to look at, either.

History is digestion. As the leaves on my Russian olive gradually reappear, followed by blossoms that fill the air with a heady fragrance, I know my raccoons will also return to this trashy tree, the spring nights providing more than enough privacy. I just wish they’d keep their voices down.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an opinion column service of High Country News. He writes in Arriola, Colorado.

]]>No publisherWildlifeWriters on the Range2014/04/23 05:05:00 GMT-6ArticleThere are too many unwanted backyard horseshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/there-are-too-many-unwanted-backyard-horses
The tale of the neglected domestic horse is a tragic one.I was sitting in a comfortable chair one evening, reading a vintage book about the Old West, when I happened to glance out the window to see a horse cropping the grass along my driveway. I don’t own a horse. I don’t want a horse. Too many of my neighbors own horses, only to let them hang around doing nothing, like silhouettes against the horizon.

I went out to the porch for a better look, thinking I’d encounter a part-time cowboy. I called out to the empty horizon: “Yoo-hoo?” Nothing but a nicker from the horse.

Acres of print examine the plight of wild horses in the West, often referred to as mustangs, and I’m not suggesting that the problem deserves any less attention than my problem -- the neglected domestic horse situation. Finicky horse advocates will argue that the term “wild mustangs” is erroneous; such horses aren’t wild, just feral, having been introduced by the Spanish centuries ago from their own domesticated stock.

But whether such free-roaming horses fairly or unfairly compete for forage on public grazing lands and whether they are native or invasive species is beside the point. The horse in my driveway had a ribcage distinct as a xylophone, and she didn’t look wild at all, just worn out.

She politely glanced up, allowed me to approach her, then went on cropping the grass. As I ran my hand along her neck and flanks, it became obvious my guest hadn’t just missed a meal or two. She’d been systematically ignored until her presence probably got on her owners’ nerves. Then they turned her loose.

Wild horses may be scattered all across the West, but it’s the domestic stock being “set free” to find their own, usually unfortunate destinies that worries me. Horse owners down on their economic luck think they’ll save bales of cash by letting their charges wander. The notion that horses will find their own way -- the way many people believe feral dogs and cats do -- is absurd. In fact, it’s equally absurd even for dogs and cats.

In the literature that children grow up on, equines are adorable, utterly huggable and just too precious. “Black Beauty” and “My Friend Flicka,” to name just a few, are stories that tug at the heartstrings, prompting children to stroke a plastic replica of a dream they long to transform into flesh someday. I don’t know how many youngsters receive ponies for their birthdays, but based on my own informal gallop poll, grownups all across the West lack the self-control necessary to rein in their urge to own a horse.

In Alice Walker’s book, “Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful,” the horses that are supposed to be making the landscape more beautiful are not the same ones strung for miles along our rural Western fence lines, pulling up the grass by the roots until a piece of paradise is reduced to an acre of bare dirt.

I found a plastic pail in the garage and filled it with oatmeal, then pulled a rope off a nail. One taste of oats, and my mystery horse would have followed me anywhere. I followed the trail of horse apples along the road, all the way up to the highway and back again. Along the way, every neighbor’s horse rushed across its allotted pasture to shinny up to the wire, whinny and snort, as if gossiping about this stranger.

We ended up back in my driveway, which is a poor excuse for a horse refuge, because my property is not fenced, but I have a good-fences-make-good-neighbors neighbor who once visited my property to collect his truant bull. We get quite a parade of livestock wandering across our land for the simple reason that we don’t fence them out.

He said no, it wasn’t his horse, but offered to put her up in a small pasture where he’d quartered three of another neighbor’s horses to clean up his weedy grass -- a sort of weed-and-feed negotiation.

As he worked at undoing the gate chain, I removed the rope from around my horse’s neck. I say “my horse” but really she wasn’t anyone’s horse, not any more. She leaned her long head against my shoulder and held it there for a ponderous moment before I urged her into the company of more strangers.

Later, I found a man who provides rescue services for animals, but he had no room for a horse. He suggested I check with the brand inspector, which sounded like a great idea, until I learned that the horse would likely end up at the sale barn, which might mean a future as horsemeat rather than adoption.

One evening as I returned from town, I noticed that my horse and in fact all the horses were gone, probably for another job of weed eradication, or so I hoped. I thought about stopping, about asking someone, but maybe because I’d read and watched too many Westerns, I had the notion that every horse eventually heads off into the sunset -- and better that than painful neglect.

]]>No publisherWildlifeWriters on the Range2013/01/04 00:00:00 GMT-7ArticleDon't lock us out of our landhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/dont-lock-us-out-of-our-land
The author is unhappy when he finds a favorite Forest Service camping area closed and locked.When I parked beside the locked gate at the Forest Service’s recreation site, a hefty entrance sign that had been bolted together out of four-by-fours lay flat on the gravel. The steel tube where campers were supposed to deposit their fee had an autumn shade of rust spiraling up its trunk. A welcome sign had been replaced by one insisting that the road was closed.

Such a fine campground, decommissioned like so many others as public land agencies struggle to rein in their spending. I locked the truck anyway before climbing over the gate, just in case the ghosts of former campers had taken to haunting the premises.

Five years ago was the last time I’d stayed overnight at this national forest facility in western Colorado, and I had cheerfully assumed that it would always be open, perennial as the wildflowers. Rarely crowded and located only a few miles downstream from a dam, this recreational campground served as an ideal fishing corridor and general pit stop, not to mention a place for quiet contemplation and restoration of the soul. I know, that’s a lot to expect from a park, but like much of the public, I spend a considerable amount of time worshipping at the chapel of our national forests.

One feature that always attracted me to this particular spot was a ribbon of concrete that contractors had poured beside the river. It runs the entire length of the campground. At the time of its completion over 15 years ago, I thought, “Wow, the tax dollars must be as slippery as the fish -- strictly catch and release.” Now, the unnecessary walkway is striped with weeds. They might be green, but they sure don’t resemble money.

Even more impressive is the high sandstone wall that looms across the river. An array of gunshots pock and mar its surface, but nothing short of a cataclysmic event could decommission this monolith made by nature. It was built by the kind of slow upheaval that bureaucrats will never understand. It requires no budget or maintenance. It’s just rock, solid and inspirational.

Every Forest Service campground feature I encountered during this comeback tour qualified as being on the path to ruin. The concrete walls of the toilet had been bulldozed flat. The gravel ring road that serviced the campsites was losing its war with the weeds. Those cast-iron fire-rings at empty picnic sites gaped reminded me of burned-out stars.

It may seem logical that as our public-land budgets are downsized, our accessibility to those lands must also be reduced, but logic doesn’t originate in the heart. The public may no longer be able to afford rangers or the regular maintenance of hiking trails, visitor centers, museum displays, bookstores, brochures and trail guides, but if it all has to go, then let it go. Accessibility, however, should not be on the table, even if there are no tables.

Just give us a piece of gravel where we can park and maybe a toilet. We’ll provide the toilet paper and enough imagination to appreciate the unimproved natural world. If it’s too expensive to maintain the toilets, we’ll bear that too.

Nothing is more frustrating than austerity, especially after we’ve had it all. Of course, nature might disagree. I saw disastrous changes when I arrived at this derelict campground, but I also happened to see them on a glorious afternoon. Everything woody was changing color for fall, wildflowers still speckled the landscape, and the sun poured through the thinly filtered canopy of trees, promising an unusually warm morning and a full-service afternoon, especially for mushrooms like puffballs.

It could be that the “public” isn’t sophisticated enough to care for its public lands without a government agency to supervise it. It could also be that the passes, permits, stickers and policies in place had improved the public’s access. But as I circled this overbuilt and now decaying campground, I couldn’t help asking myself: ‘How much of this stuff do we really need?’ Show me a trail marker; I can find my way.

I yawned, feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle. As I made my way back to the truck, I uncovered the numbered post from what had been my favorite campsite, tossed into the weeds. I picked it up and took it home with me, then pounded it into the ground beside my driveway. It will be the proof that I have a genuine interest in calling our public lands my home.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a former teacher and current writer in western Colorado.

]]>No publisherRecreationWriters on the Range2012/10/04 01:00:00 GMT-6ArticleShifting gears to a brave new world of Lycrahttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/shifting-gears-wearing-lycra
Is it possible to buy a new mountain bike without buying tons of other stuff?After riding for 25 years atop my old English 10-speed with the skinny steel wheels and tape-wrapped handlebars, I finally bought one of those fancy, 21-speed mountain bikes.

When I got the new bike home -- they don't call them bicycles anymore -- and leaned it against the wall in my garage -- where did the kickstand go? -- I sat and pondered this new world.

Hanging upside down by two hooks in the ceiling, my old bike stared at me reproachfully, cobwebs glistening. If rusty spokes could speak, they might have intoned, "Grasshopper, are you ashamed of your teacher?" In fact, I was. Ease had become my religion: Quick-release hubs, gel-foam seats, rapid-fire shifting, aluminum frame, all a technological stew simmered by corporate executives and served up as a modern bicycle. Bike, I mean.

The owner of our local bike shop will happily talk your ear off if what you want is information about riding. But when I asked him how expensive a new bike could run, he pointed toward a muddy specimen leaning against the counter and said, "That one runs about $4,000."

I looked at him again and swallowed hard. If a support group for naive mountain bikers exists out there, I had blurted out the words that qualify me for membership: "You must be kidding." He was not. I then toured the shop, trying to make sense of all the nouveau bike stuff.

A few labels showed I was in the province of a subculture, if not a cult. One pair of sleek black shorts reasoned, "This features the capillary action and the fast moisture-transfer capabilities of microsensor and ultrasensor fabric." A simply jersey postulated, "We designed an innovative 50 cm zipper that eliminates the bulky look of exposed zipper teeth." Clearly, this was high-tech wear with a jargon all its own.

Back in my old bicycling days, I never had to worry about what to wear. If the weather felt cool, I wore a jacket. If the sun was out, I wore my cutoffs. If there was thunder and lightning, I pedaled like hell and felt lucky to get home with just a muddy stripe up my back. I had no image to defend; I was simply a guy out for a ride.

Riding back then brought to mind the image of John Wayne, cowboy boots, blue jeans and cowboy hats; no Ultrasuedefleecechamois shorts with Hydrofil Lycra liners.

It's all changed. I stood in the bike shop and stared into the vortex of complexity, wondering if those olden times were somehow better. Was it more genuine when I borrowed my mother's clothespins to attach baseball cards along the fenders that would flap against the spokes as I rode? To think today of how many collectible baseball card fortunes I squandered back then makes my head buzz.

No, it wasn't better, just different, and now it was past time to join the modern world. So I chose a specialized brand. It cost as much as my first car. As I gingerly led it out of the store, I could envision the entire line of mountain bike equipment that yearned to follow me out to the street: A roof carrier for transporting my bike into the mountains, thorn-resistant inner tubes to reduce the hassle of flats, an air pump for emergencies, some better pedals and biking shoes, insulated water bottles, a light-weight indestructible helmet, gloves with the fingers amputated at the first knuckle, mirrors for assessing the traffic, lights, "panniers," as bike baskets are called, maybe even a kickstand, and not least, a pair of those pricey little bike pants with the padded bottom.

What had started as a simple desire to adapt to the modern world wanted to bloat into a major investment. I could have gone right back inside with my credit card and joined the legions of cyclists who take their equipment oh-so seriously. Instead, I stuffed my shiny new machine into the trunk and cinched it down with good ol' bungee cords and headed for home. Perhaps I am still cheap.

That was last week. What I haven't done yet is go for a ride. So today, I rode. But rather than head for the miles of rugged Western mountains or canyon trails, I initiated my new bike by putting on my jeans and boots and riding it a half-mile to the county dump. There, my bike and I paused before those enormous steel gates and gazed into that final place where all new things eventually rest. The view was chastening, but I have to confess that the ride seemed effortless.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a former teacher who lives in Dolores, Colorado.

]]>No publisherRecreationWriters on the RangeEssays2011/07/08 00:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLive fee or diehttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/live-fee-or-die
User fees for public land keep rising, even as campground hours and services are cut. We grumbled, but paid the nearly 50 percent fee increase for registering our motor vehicle in Colorado. And we also paid the registration fee for our camp trailer, which had nearly doubled. I felt as helpless as Jack in the Beanstalk, when he hid under a bucket listening to a giant stomp around shouting, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM.”

Fees paid, we decided to go camping at out favorite state park on Colorado’s Western Slope. We paid our entrance fee and started looking around for a good campsite. Then we were hit up for the overnight camping fee. And then my wife gave me the news: “Guess what?”

I sighed: “Don’t tell me there’s a toilet paper fee.”

“No, I saw a motorhome with a toad threaten to turn a park personnel into a dwarf.”

Let me explain: When a motorhome tows a vehicle, the attachment is referred to as a toad. Last year, Colorado state parks began requiring the driver to pay the vehicle entrance fee twice -- once for the motor home, and a second time for the toad that’s being pulled. Many other states did, and do, the same. RVers are understandably upset by the increased fee, which is why the motorhome owner was berating the ranger. Fortunately for us, our trailer has no engine, so it’s not a toad. Neither are fifth wheels, horse trailers or pop-up campers. These require no additional fees, and there’s so little left in this culture that doesn’t come with a fee, I felt like kissing my trailer, cutely named a Scamp.

But I didn’t want to kiss the toad. No telling what it would turn into.

Meanwhile, the policy of charging a daily use fee on top of a camping fee is just the same rabbit coming out of a different hat. It might make better sense if the Chinese bought all our motorhomes, like they did with all our Hummers, but what can I say? I’m Scamping instead of tenting.

We have become a culture of feeloaders, which is not that different from freeloaders. By definition, a freeloader is “a person who takes advantage of others' generosity without giving anything in return.” Colorado state parks, for instance, have decided -- according to park officials -- to stave off funding deficits by “program reductions, small fee increases and shorter hours at certain state parks.” More fees, fewer services. Sounds like feeloading to me.

Such tactics for increasing revenue are being used all across the West, and Colorado state parks are only following the same corporate model that sectors of American business have been abusing for generations. It amounts to this kind of thinking: Generate more revenue by reducing the quality of the product, then pass an illusion of innovation on to the consumer. That is why we often find goods and even federal agencies like the Minerals Management Service repackaged and relabeled as “new and improved.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if campers all across America eventually find their sites reclassified as “suites,” requiring additional fees if campers occupy both the sleeping and the campfire quarters of their portion of dirt.

I can also imagine a strategy that breaks down the concept of fees into its components. Perhaps every time you see a park sign, you could be assessed a recognition fee, to help pay for the rising cost of advertising for the state’s tourism dollars. When you enter the park, you could be charged a hourly use fee, which offsets the hourly wage all park employees are still required by law to be paid. Naturally, there will be an overnight fee if you intend to stay, and if you use water provided by the park, a water fee may be applicable. Toilet fees would be impractical, because nobody wants to encourage random peeing in the woods.

Maybe the problem with living in a fee-enriched economy is forgetting that the public is growing fee weary. We are all towing that economic toad, and brother, it’s heavy.

Isn’t it time someone concluded that a fee increase ought to come with some kind of improvement in product or service? I like the advertised notion that staying at your local park is as easy as camping in your own backyard, but really, I paid my latest county tax assessment and I’m already being charged an additional fee to park in my own driveway.

Fee-free at last is my new mantra.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes from rural Montezuma County, Colorado.

]]>No publisherWriters on the Range2010/09/16 00:00:00 GMT-6ArticleOff the road againhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/off-the-road-again
Americans have always romanticized being "on the road" like Jack Kerouac, but these days it would be more interesting to journey off the road -- without cars.Jack Kerouac wrote his entire novel "On the Road" in just three weeks. He used a continuous roll of teletype paper, as if pausing to put in a new sheet of paper would have caused a pile-up on his imagination's highway. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said that Kerouac provided us with "a vision of America seen from a speeding car." When Kerouac's novel first appeared in 1957, I was just a tyke on a trike. The only Beats I knew about were vegetables.

Now that I'm down the road, so to speak -- a retired schoolteacher living without a lesson plan -- I realize Kerouac's vision of living fast and dying young is not my choice, and certainly not the road I want to see carved by our energy specialists through our public lands in the West. Perhaps it's time for a new novel.

If Kerouac's highway survives, we'll need some sort of measuring stick to judge how far we've strayed from America's true freedom. Not that romantic, century-old affair with the open road, but our commitment to open land that breathes oxygen into our lives.

My novel will be titled "Off the Road." My main character's quest will take him on a quest, seeking wilderness on the East Coast. He'll get lucky, and a hydrogen-powered runabout will pick him up. He'll take this free ride all the way to Missouri, and then find a mass transportation connection to complete his journey. All the while he'll fiddle with his Golden Age Parks Pass, promising himself that he'll visit every remaining piece of public land on his way back West -- on his way back home. The complication in the novel, of course, will be in getting him to these destinations, having lost both his wheels and his wiles.

But that's where I always run out of literary gas. Surely, the disenfranchised, the down and out, the beat, will always be with us, reconstituted along the lines of Kerouac's generation of beatniks. My generation will likely end up chronicled as a culture of debtniks, of maxed-out credit card consumers foreclosed out of their homes, living with their mothers in their childhood homes -- just like Kerouac.

Still, I'd start my novel with hope, by preaching the sermon of the wilderness, a beatific vision of our heritage still vibrant in a futuristic world. Public lands are the closest companions we have with Kerouac's boxcars, beaches and open highways. "Off the Road" will speak for a constituency of backcountry dreamers, disengaged from the current culture's obsession with ATVs, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, rock crawlers and SUVs. It will be a place where the free spirit of America and the West can be passed around like a bottle of cheap wine.

Maybe Willie Nelson will rewrite his song for my novel's debut: "Back off the road again." Maybe in another half-century Americans will become reacquainted with their feet, will choose to walk again, to find a trailhead and celebrate the absence of pavement. Maybe I'll have my character backpacking defunct motel furniture into the parks and lighting campfires fueled by Chinese particle-board night stands. With over half of the world's population already living in cities, seeing actual starlight might be as mind-blowing as hearing Allen Ginsberg first read his poem "Howl" at the City Lights book store in San Francisco.

Naturally, the natural world will play a big part in my off-the-road version of America. We may be running out of oil, running out of space, running out of money and running out of patience, but if we ever lose our public lands, we will be so much more impoverished, even to the point of having lost our vision.

As for my main character, whatever his name will be, he'll be left with his impossible dream, much like Don Quixote. Every nuclear power plant's cooling tower, coal-fired smoke stack or huge solar-power array and nest of power lines will make him think he's standing beside Yellowstone's Old Faithful. Every high-rise will induce him to imagine staring down into an arroyo from the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. Every airliner leaving a vapor trail will remind him of condors, gliding majestically across the milky white cataracts of his skies.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He lives and dreams in Dolores, Colorado.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the Range2009/08/18 10:40:17 GMT-6ArticleI’ve got the powerhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/16890
In a house filled with your standard American gadgets,
David Feela tracks his electricity usage – and is properly
horrified. It isn’t like one of
those holiday scenes with a flurry of snow swirling, caught inside
a vigorously shaken globe of winter wonder. It’s only a glass
cylinder about the size of a three-pound coffee can, attached to my
telephone post. A silver disc spins inside it. Vaguely resembling a
CD player, it’s known in the utilities business as an
electric meter. It measures my indulgences. A long time ago, an
employee from the electric company used to stop by to read its
numbers. Eventually, customers were asked to read their own
numbers. Then about 10 years ago, the electric company replaced my
old meter, and when I looked out my window after dark, a tiny red
light winked back at me from under the glass, steady as an
omnipotent eye. Now my meter reads itself.

Benjamin
Franklin’s early experiment with electricity involved a kite,
a key and a lightning bolt. Frankly, he was taking far more chances
than I would take. My experiment required only a flashlight and a
steady hand. It involved going outside one night to watch the meter
spin.

I’ll admit I didn’t come to any
earth-shattering conclusion other than noticing how each revolution
was costing me money, so I went back to the house and turned on
every big name-brand appliance I owned, then plugged in every
Christmas light. In other words, I cranked it up, just to see how
much faster the meter moved. It whirled.

Next, I went
back into the house and shut everything off. I assumed the meter
would slow down, which it did, but I was surprised to see that it
never stopped. I returned inside the house and unplugged each and
every cord from its wall socket; it continued to spin. Something --
maybe just the pull of the moon -- wouldn’t allow my meter to
quit. Who knows? It’s even possible that, like a hamster in
its cage, I had been expending enough energy running back and forth
house to keep the wheel turning.

Since this experience,
my first consumer-based experiment, I’ve located more than a
few permanent electrical leaks in my home, most of them approved of
or even sponsored by corporate manufacturers and, more than likely,
the electric company.

It’s shocking to see how many
electrical devices absorb a continuous flow of electricity just to
keep in touch. And once they’re plugged in, they beep, flash
their little lights, wobble and whir, making all the sounds to let
me know they’re pleased. In other words, they are
manufactured like parasites, to attach themselves to the grid and
suck it dry until the device overheats, or the power company goes
belly-up, whichever comes first.

Granted, most of these
devices require only a trickle of juice to keep, say, that tiny red
LCD light on the TV, DVD player, or surge protector glowing, or the
numerals on yet another digital clock crisp enough to read. I
counted 14 clocks in my house, which helped me decide that
it’s time for my family to start paying attention to how much
electricity we use. The silver disc spins silently, which is
probably best, because if it generated a high-pitched whine the
faster it spun, I’d have all the neighborhood dogs in my
yard, while cities like Phoenix or Las Vegas would have their
entire populations running for their Civil Defense shelters.

The best answer for the West still comes from the
prospect of generating one’s own electricity through solar
power or any of the alternatives bandied about, such as tapping
underground heat or wind. All of the technology has been around for
decades, but some people must still believe it’s a
tree-hugger’s dream. I mean, I thought America would be
mass-producing fuel-efficient cars right after President Nixon
lowered the national speed limit to 55 mph.

What I need
at my house is a static electrician, someone who can wire the
carpeting in my living room and hallway so that the electrical
discharge I’m constantly firing off into the unknown can be
harnessed. If I’m lucky, and if I actually drag my feet the
way the government is doing, maybe I can generate enough
electricity during the next cold spell to sell my surplus power
back to the electric company.

David Feela is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He teaches
and writes in Cortez, Colorado.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleScooter blues: When you're environmentally correct and
get no respecthttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/16743
The writer drives an efficient scooter — taking a
ride on the mild side I wish I knew why Harley
riders stare straight through me when I'm coming down the street on
my scooter from the opposite direction.

Sadly, I'm
beginning to suspect American motorcyclists of subscribing to a
caste system in which Harley Davidsons occupy the top tier,
followed by the Euro-touro blends, the bullet bikes, dirt bikes,
and finally, the dung of motorized two-wheeled transportation, the
scooter. I own a scooter. Americans are buying and riding more
gas-saving scooters. Do we have to organize our own rally just to
get a little respect?

It may be that a manifesto tooled
into leather and nailed to a dealership door could make our case
for a new age on the streets. Not everyone who chooses to ride a
scooter is a wimp; clearly, not everyone who rides a Harley is a
rugged individual. I've seen the ladies with blue hair driving
their two-wheeled Buicks and believe me, it takes guts to scoot
around on our public roads with only 49ccs under our seats. I'm
proud of my comrades for staying alert, being cautious and sucking
up less gasoline. It's time the big bikes realized they're
representing the Hummers and SUVs of the motorcycle world.

If I could market a scooter look — an outfit, say,
that screams "take a ride on the mild side" — maybe
stereotypes would shatter and the thundering chrome classes would
meet us with open arms. Unfortunately, uniforms don't appeal to
those efficient souls who ride scooters.

Most of us
follow the fashion model dictated by common sense: If it's cool, we
dress warmly; if it's warm, we wear something cool; if it's wet we
try to stay out of the rain. Leather, chains, fringed vests,
beards, braids, and tattoos amount to clutter, and really, there's
not enough room on a scooter. Trademark insignias and corporate
belonging do little to motivate the modest scootee.

I'm
not sure if it's a matter of economics or just sour grapes. In many
Western states, scooters with engines under 50ccs need not pay for
endorsement licensing, registration, plates or insurance. They can
even park on the sidewalks. If I were big bike, I'd be upset, but
there's no need to take it out on us little guys. Let's be role
models for each other and try to relax: We won't say anything about
12 bikes lined up in two parking spaces if you'll just disregard
our wimpy looking shopping baskets.

Being ignored as a
bipedal without pedals only makes matters worse. The scooter rider
already feels invisible at the traffic light, but here's the most
embarrassing part. I've arrived at intersections early in the
morning when no traffic is forthcoming, especially from side
streets. I pull up to the crosswalk where the traffic signal should
get some sense of my presence, but nothing happens. The light stays
red for me, green for the rest of humanity. I could sit a full five
minutes wrapped in my invisibility cloak, waiting for the signal to
change, waiting for another vehicle to pull up. Once I even put my
scooter up on its center stand and jogged over to push the
pedestrian crosswalk button. The light changed, but it mistook me
for a pedestrian.

Lately, I've taken to simply looking
both ways for traffic and scooting across the intersection
regardless of what the light tells me to do. Hey, what I'm doing
amounts to a blatant disregard for authority — just like any
good Harley rider.

David Feela is a contributor
to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He is a teacher,
writer and proud scooter owner in Cortez,
Colorado.

]]>No publisherGrowth & SustainabilityWriters on the RangeEssaysArticlePraise the Lord and pass the pancakeshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/16319
The writer almost gets lost inside the dreaded Buffet
Triangle Drive across the West along
the Interstate and you'll get the impression that sleeping, eating
and filling up the gas tank are the activities we hold dear to our
hearts. Of these three, however, the greatest seems to be eating.

I'd stayed overnight at a motel no driver could see, much
less imagine, just off the interstate. It probably had been built
in the 1920s, remodeled in the 1950s, and then pretty much left as
a landmark to ineptitude for the last 50 years. No HBO, no ice
machine, no continental breakfast, no security device unless a
doormat that wouldn't lie flat had been intended to trip intruders
as they skulked past my door. My room had no fewer than three
double beds. A young clerk gave me the single rate and expressed
relief that 'd taken the last room, for then he could flip the
switch and put power to the word "No" on the neon "Vacancy" sign
above the door; we could all rest assured: The motel was full.

The next morning, I drove back toward the Interstate for
breakfast. The Golden Trough sported a towering sign visible at
least a half mile away. I pulled into the parking lot, locked up,
then patiently stood beside the plaque just inside the door that
announced: "Please Wait to be Seated."

"Table for one?"
the hostess inquired.

"Yes, please."

"Did you
get a ticket?" she asked.

I tried a joke. "No, I observed
the parking lot speed limit when I pulled in."

She seemed
irritated by yet another guy who thinks he's funny, but all she
said was, "I mean, for the breakfast buffet. If you just want to
order, you'll have to wait a minute."

Three other
breakfast parties had crowded in behind me and she glanced toward
them with a rekindled graciousness. "Tickets?" The party directly
behind me waved their stubs in the air, as if they were bidding on
the prize steer at a livestock auction.

Before the words
"If you'll come this way" could be uttered, the entire clutch of
tourists pushed past me, making a beeline toward the seating area.

I had unknowingly stepped into one of the many (but often
not talked about) Buffet Triangles. Unlike the better-known Bermuda
Triangle, people crossing into this vortex don't disappear, they
just get substantially larger. It's the hundreds of pounds of meat,
potatoes, eggs and pastries that simply vanish. Just like that. Had
I chosen to spend the night at a major motel along the interstate,
I'd probably have possessed my own ticket, a complimentary
breakfast coupon packaged with each room's rental. Instead, I ended
up at the Goldilocks Inn, where I got three beds, none of them just
right.

The hostess returned like a sheepdog, prepared to
herd another ticketed gaggle of grazers into the dining room. She
glanced at me, remembering that I'd asked for something unusual.
She gave me one of those looks reserved for wolves, a sideways kind
of facial snarl that amounted to a warning not to mess with her
lambs.

"I'll have to clean a table. It will be a few
minutes." Then she looked over my shoulder. "Tickets?" Another
group of hungry motorists accelerated past me toward the dining
area.

All three groups waiting behind me had been seated
before I got ushered to a table. I ordered a cheese omelet, then
sat back to observe the buffet crowd.

There's a kind of
excitement in the air when food is present, an aroma that triggers
memories and abducts the rational mind. A buffet is designed to
stimulate the appetite, which is why so many plates carried past my
table were heaped like little mountains. A buffet seems to taunt
us: I dare you to eat more than you paid for.

Now that
the federal government has declared obesity a disease, we probably
need to rethink the buffet mentality. The Pillsbury Dough Boy has
been America's role model long enough. I mean, even bartenders can
be held responsible for serving drinks to obviously intoxicated
patrons. By my count over half the customers shuffling past me
appeared pudgy, paunchy, potbellied or just plain wide. There
should have been a designated eater standing by in the lobby.

I'm lucky I wasn't in a hurry, because during the long
wait for my omelet, I almost caved in and switched to the tempting
buffet. A waistline is a terrible thing to watch.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
writes in Cortez, Colorado.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleThe trailers of Montezuma Countyhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/16258
The writer lives in a trailer and loves what it
represents: frugality and the weird fact that it comes with wheels
but rarely moves It’s like a soap opera
romance, this ongoing affection of mine for the old-style single or
double-wide mobile homes, more commonly known as trailers.

To me, their appeal is strongest when I’m driving a
gravel county road, and out in a field I see one, perched like an
alien spacecraft on a few open acres. Or, I’m turning into
the shaded niches of a well-worn trailer park, and it’s
there, like a time machine, made of corrugated tin and glass.
Sometimes it’s been repainted, and never the bland
manufacturer’s color from 30 years ago, but a fresh swath of
purple, or yellow or even turquoise and pink.

I should
know: I’ve been parked since 1986 in a 1972 double-wide. I
don’t know if it was new when it arrived on the property. It
has no wheels, but when I have to climb into the crawl space
beneath the mobile home, I can see where wheels have been mounted.
There’s not much security down there, knowing that tornadoes
have a sweet tooth for mobile homes. They twist trailers and then
spit them out again, but it’s still a strange thought: A home
could roll in like a tumbleweed and then roll back out again.

My unit is also old enough to probably be illegal,
manufactured during the era of pressed board flooring and thin
galvanized metal roofing. I’ve done the mobile home roofover
(similar to a middle-aged male combover) and I flush with caution,
realizing that a flood could turn my floor into waffle wood.
Luckily, I live in a county that essentially believes: If you can
drag it here, we can put up with it, which is why the hardier of
these trailers should be preserved, designated as historic local
treasures, of no lesser magnitude than those infamous bridges from
that county in the Midwest.

The mobile home's survival
offers us a reminder of a time when a family’s housing
ambitions were scaled back somewhat closer to, say, reality. No
median sales price hovering around $207,000. No floor space with
enough square-footage to hold a line dance for a football team.
Mobile homes are proof that people could actually live with less,
and did. I do now, and its constraint makes certain I continue to
do so.

Many others are still living that way, which is
why I always slow down to admire these domestic time capsules. The
vintage trailer is a covered bridge of sorts, spanning two banks:
One side rooted with working people who could at one time own their
own homes, and on the other side the current real estate market,
where a lifetime of slowly diminishing mortgage debt is the glimmer
at the end of tunnel. I know some people consider yesterday’s
trailers trash when compared to today’s modular, custom,
set-on-a-slab, instant triple-wide castles. It is fair to say that
a trailer does not have the investment potential of a ranchette
with a massively imposing entrance gate. Maybe so, but I’d
rather spend my days renovating the past than making payments on
someone else’s future.

I’ll admit that much
of a trailer’s styling, especially during the ‘60s and
‘70s, was a little too boxy, but it’s tough to argue
with a classic trailer advertising slogan, "Home is where you park
it." For me, the idea of being self-contained has never lost its
appeal.

Housing needs are basic for all people, but
available housing has taken a nasty turn away from anything
approaching basic. In Pagosa Springs, Colo., for example, 15
homeowners in the Riverview Trailer Park have been evicted to make
way for a 39-unit condominium development, with some units starting
at a lofty $250,000. The same practice is happening all across the
West as an economic boom in real estate sends trailer homeowners
scurrying for cover. For our own protection as locals, before the
real estate bubble pops, we’ll all be wearing condos, the
only safe housing available.

Where’s a romantically
inclined professional photographer when you need one? Maybe a lanky
Clint Eastwood type, someone with an eye to show us the implicit
beauty in an antiquated hallway without wheels. And even if the
trailers look a little shabby by current standards, they embody a
fiscal fantasy we’re in danger of forgetting. They stand for
autonomy, at least as long as they’re allowed to stand.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). He writes and teaches in Cortez,
Colorado.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleBuying used gets him enthusedhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/15606
The writer hunts for recycled bargains and revels in the
chase Westerners are packrats. Blame
it on the availability of flea markets or just the size of our
backyards. My house is no exception, except that most of my stuff
comes from the midden heap, which doesn’t mean I’ve
been pilfering artifacts from sacred sites.

The Anasazi
used to dump their trash much like many of our ranchers, farmers
and land owners — into the nearest arroyo — which
archaeologists have taken to calling "midden heaps." In a thousand
years, whoever digs up my ruin will find more than they bargained
for.

The midden heap I refer to has been sponsored by a
local thrift store. I’m proud to live in this region, because
the West is a haven for us fix-it up types, folks who never throw
anything away because one day it might come in handy. Maybe I ought
to have been an archaeologist. I own enough stuff to open my own
museum, but I lack the training to properly classify and display
it.

My mother was appalled when she first learned that I
shop at thrift stores. To her and to many of her generation, thrift
stores were full of dead people’s clothes, where the
destitute shuffled in for a handout. She insisted on buying her
stuff new. I try to think of a thrift store as an excavation. The
goods arrive, usually in a mound at the back door, and savvy
sorters begin by digging through the bags and boxes to separate
what’s saleable from what belongs in the dumpster.

During this process the workers can be heard to exclaim, "Look at
this!" Or, "What the heck is that supposed to be?" When
archaeologists can’t identify an artifact, they pass it off
as having "sacred or religious" significance Luckily, the
volunteers don’t write dissertations about their quandaries.
They simply shrug their shoulders, laugh, and set it out on a shelf
to see if a customer can identify it.

I never realized
before how much of the world gets discarded. Everything new can
suddenly turn less than new, less than perfect. Once upon a time,
thrift shops were havens of the poor, those down on their luck or
just plain downtown, looking for a drink. The Salvation Army,
Goodwill, New Horizons. Names flying like flags where we pledge our
sympathy.

I’ve seen people in the aisles, holding a
shirt up against a shadow, fitting a foot into a shoe they’d
like to fill. Others are families, mothers with children in tow,
furiously shopping so they might fill an empty bag, college kids
laughing outrageously at what looks outrageous. Then buying it.

Pioneers settled the West, spurred by the thrill of
discovery, and it’s exciting to know that the thrill
hasn’t vanished. Last week, I found a car rack for my
mountain bike at a thrift store, identical to the $60 version I
bought at a specialized bike shop. The used one cost me 3 bucks, so
instead of owning two, I returned the expensive one for a refund.
I’ve purchased furniture with no down payment, and the only
interest I have to deal with comes from the people who stop by and
ask, "Wherever did you find that chair?"

I’ve got
more used books than I’ll ever be able to read in one
lifetime, but when I heard that bookshelves in a double-wide make
good insulation, I get a warm feeling every time I buy another.

Some people might call what I do cheap, but I’m
comfortable with the word. Compare the thrifty feeling with the
typical advertising banter of blowout sales at most retail stores
and you’ll understand why "used" gets me enthused. I mean,
really, a 15 percent savings on Levi jeans! Big deal. The relaxed
fit I’m after is the knowledge that my total bill adds up to
an average mall shopper’s sales tax.

You see,
there’s nothing wrong with secondhand. So much of what we use
hardly ever gets used up. When we learn to feel at home with what
has been in other people’s homes, we begin to see the West as
a great recycling bin — not just a receptacle for glass,
aluminum, paper or plastic.

As thrifters, we are born
into the ranks of gold diggers or even tinhorn sheriffs, the ones
who asks the rustler with the noose around his neck, what he
intends to do with his boots once he’s ridden into the
unknown.

David Feela is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He is a teacher in Cortez,
Colorado.

]]>No publisherClimate ChangeWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleBreaking for freedom in the New Westhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/15213
The writer feels a certain kinship with a fenced-in
neighbor’s horse My neighbor owns a horse. I
see it standing in the field across from my house every morning as
I leave for work, and when I come home the horse is still waiting
there, like a picture of grace and power that has no place to go.

My neighbor rides the horse up the road and back again on
weekends, a sort of cowboy without a cow, horsepower enough to
rustle a few moments from the week, then turn them loose before
heading back to his modern life at the doublewide ranch.

I could theoretically be his partner, for I watch him — even
watch for him — as he rides up the road, and somehow feel an
affinity for his refusal to sell the animal or let somebody put the
old horse out to pasture. Oh, we’re a sorry bunch, Easterners
and Midwesterners transplanted in the West, imagining an eternal
frontier.

We see the mountains rise up like so many
bucking broncos, hunker down beside a side-winding river, and
we’re forever romantic, cellular phones and paging devices
flashing in the holsters strapped to our belts. And the real
Westerners, the few around us, the ones born in the valley and
nursed on a secret formula of chewing tobacco and beer, they think
the only reason strangers keep showing up is because someone forgot
to close the gate.

My neighbor doesn’t care what
people think. That’s obvious to anyone who drives past: His
yard is a clutter of junk cars, broken appliances, twisted bicycle
frames and iron parts from something unnatural that seems to have
planted itself as a memorial.

His horse has a little
piece of ground fenced off from the chaos, its own grass, bathtub
trough and a good view of the mountains. Granted, it’s not
much, but how much does a horse need? A cowboy, on the other hand,
has to keep his stock in line, and though my neighbor’s horse
doesn’t appear to get as much attention as his pickup truck,
boat, camper, snowmobiles or his ATV, it stands as an idle reminder
that we, too, can be saddled by whatever holds the reins.

Everything I own eats a little of my time, even if it claims to
save it in the long run. My car guzzles gas, my computer consumes
bytes of information, my telephone beeps and swallows half a dozen
voices only to regurgitate them when I finally get home. My VCR
tapes the shows I don’t have time to watch so I can view them
once I’ve pulled an hour free, just like an old farmer
clearing his land, tree by tree.

Last year, my
neighbor’s horse suddenly bolted through a barbed wire fence.
Two deep gashes were torn into its chest as well as a multitude of
smaller ones across its front legs. The horse might have died
— would have died — but my neighbor caught it, and
because he owns no stable or shed where he might confine a horse,
he came to me to ask if he might use my garage.

There, he
tied the horse to the front wall and with no more than a quick
injection of veterinarian Novocain, began to stitch the
horse’s flesh together using a curved needle he’d
packed away with his experience as a medic in Vietnam. I’d
never seen anything like it, except to watch my grandmother stitch
a quilt in her lap, but here were blood, tissue and muscle exposed
like so many anatomy schematics in a textbook, things that belonged
on the inside somehow laid open.

My neighbor put all the
parts back and shut the fleshy door, the entire time complaining
about how much hay a horse can put away in one winter. As he led
the horse out, I suddenly knew how such a placid animal could have
behaved so rashly, charging a barbed wire fence.

The last
time it happened to me, I wound up in western Colorado.

But I was pulling a trailer packed tight with a few hundred
necessities. I unpacked them all, took a deep breath of the clear
Western air, and started planning where I’d teach school
next.

I’d like to think that that horse and me are
some kind of kin — patient, yet yearning for the unbridled
life. We make our halfhearted breaks for freedom, searching for a
slightly different perspective of that same old mountain.

Meanwhile, another year begins, and we keep on plugging.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado. He is a teacher in Cortez, Colorado, and a freelance
writer.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleJohn Muir, go homehttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/14851
The writer finds camping to be anything but solitary these
days We’d pulled
into three campgrounds run by the U.S. Forest Service and found no
place to stay for the night. Although many sites were still
unoccupied, each had a white sticker clipped to its driveway post
declaring that plans had been made, credit card numbers accepted.

It was our own fault: We’d left home at the
ridiculously late hour of 8 a.m., driven for eight hours through an
inspirational landscape (where we’d succumbed to the
temptation of stopping to look at the scenery) and worst of all,
we’d neglected to call ahead to guarantee a camping
reservation.

We deserved what we didn’t get.

Then we just got lucky. One loop of the Redstone
Campground in Colorado’s White River National Forest had
witnessed a modern-day miracle: Rangers received a cancellation
— something that hadn’t happened in the last six
months, according to our campground host.

Site number 11
ended up being the one tucked a little too near the privy, but we
took it, paid $18 for one night and joked that a 15' X 15' gravel
pad might have what it takes to rock us to sleep.

With my
lamp strapped to my head, I read a little from John Muir’s
diaries while someone’s gasoline generator rattled the aspen
leaves for nearly an hour. Then I closed my book and listened to
the evening serenade of another camper’s boombox featuring a
country singer whose heartache should have stayed back on the
ranch.

The burnt umber sunset had long ago vanished
behind the horizon, but when the security lights for the toilet
came on, I answered the call and did what nature required of me. I
thought about John Muir, who wrote in 1895: "You know that I have
not lagged behind in the work of exploring our grand wildernesses,
and in calling everybody to come and enjoy the thousand blessings
they have to offer."

Well, John, they’re all here,
every one of them from what I can tell, and I think it’s
about time somebody withdrew your invitation. I guess camping will
never again be what it was in your day — a primitive
excursion away from the security and sameness of our homes and into
the unknown.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Muir
perceived our public lands as places of "spiritual power" where the
soul could be recharged by the earth’s "divine beauty." John
Muir might be discouraged to see how tourism has been exploited for
profit by the very agencies charged with protecting it at the
beginning of the 21st century.

But wilderness consumers
have changed, too. Muir’s idea that by seeking wilderness
people could purge themselves of the "sediments of society" has
lost its appeal. More and more, it seems, campers flock to our
national forests carting the trappings of our society with them.
Out of 40 reserved sites along the Crystal River, I counted only
five that contained tents. The rest could be called "wireless
homes," functioning just like the places left behind.

The
big rigs sometimes haul cars and pull in with ovens, refrigerators,
satellite TVs, stereos, showers, hot water heaters, air
conditioners and furnaces. Muir believed that "thousands of tired,
nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that
going to the mountains is going home." Thanks to our federal
agencies that manage the outdoors for us, we have built way
stations in the woods that translate Muir’s belief literally.

Eventually, the posted rules for our campground’s
curfew took effect and things quieted down. I got up to stroll
around our loop and saw more than a dozen fire rings kindled on
this warm summer night. At first, I was struck by the absurdity of
the scene, because the last thing anyone needed was a crackling
fire.

But when I wandered farther away from the society
of campers, off the loop and along a path through the moonlit
trees, I glanced up at the sky. I noticed there, too, all those
stars, still burning.

David Feela is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is a teacher who lives and writes in Cortez,
Colorado.

]]>No publisherRecreationWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleThe ego has landed on the California coasthttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/14488
David Feela says castle-like homes show insecurity and
conspicuous consumption From
this same bluff where I stared down at the ocean this past summer,
the young William Randolph Hearst romanticized his childhood after
numerous camping trips with his family. Though Hearst lived a
majority of each year in New York City where he eventually directed
his huge newspaper empire, and though he traveled extensively
during his 88 years, Hearst remained devoted to his family bluff at
San Simeon.

Like so many people with disposable incomes
inspired by some element of lofty elegance in the natural world, he
transformed a perfectly noble promontory into a flagship to his
ego. In other words, he reduced what he loved into one more mansion
with a good view.

I mention this not because I have any
vendetta against the Hearst family, but rather, because too often
when I glance up from the highway toward one of our local majestic
vistas, my view is truncated by a home perched on the skyline like
a pseudo-Hearst castle. Hearst has been dead for over half a
century, but his legacy of insecurity and conspicuous consumption
endures.

I would be less than honest if I didn't admit
that the allure of a prominent vista has plagued me since I was a
child, drawing me to the edges of high things where I could feel
the exhilaration of the earth rushing up to meet me while my mother
would clutch at her heart, praying I wouldn't -- with my rather
clumsy gait -- trip and rush down to meet the hard dirt. Maybe it's
the same instinct that accounts for a mountain goat staging its
life high in the Rockies, or those big birds that pirouette so
close to the sun on extended wings. I mean, I can sympathize with
the impulse to soar from any summit, to capture in your heart for a
few moments a breathtaking view. It's another thing entirely to
carve a half-mile driveway to that summit while dragging a
half-million dollars of construction expenses behind you.

On the walk-through of Hearst Castle we had the chance to ogle half
a dozen priceless tapestries, along with other booty purchased by
Hearst and shipped to America. At one point, a member of our tour
snapped a photo with his forbidden "flash" option turned on. The
guide curtly responded with a warning, and we moved along in
single-file, keeping our hands to ourselves while our eyes scurried
like mice across the floor and up the walls. At the end of our
guided maze we were loaded back into a cage with wheels, and we
descended to those heights more often reserved for mere mortals.

I started worrying after returning home from California,
because vistas are what the West is all about. If it weren't for
declared wilderness and acres of publicly owned land, the
mini-castle movement could potentially buy up every inspirational
panorama under the self-serving philosophy that if a mountain
exists and nobody has built a house near the top of it, then it's
impossible to hear anyone sigh.

I know at first that
sounds ridiculous, but California residents are already battling in
court to establish public-ocean access where private homeowners
have built a wall of mansions between the land and the beaches.

Let's not forget, though we think of our lives here in
the West as high and dry, that a tide of human flesh is forever
rising, lapping closer and closer at our foothills.

I
should warn all those people out there with their homes teetering
on the pinnacle of reason that one day as I'm driving along, I just
might be stopping. They needn't worry that I'll be admonishing
anyone for claiming the skyline as his or her own property, and I
won't be monkey- wrenching any delicate artery that keeps
electricity, water, telephone or Direct TV pulsing into their
mountain havens.

No, the knock on the door will be a
timid one, coming from a man who just wants to look around, to take
the 50-cent tour, to see first-hand how close to the edge we need
to get to see the difference between awesome and awful.

David Feela is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a writer and a
teacher in Cortez, Colorado.